Page 17 of Courting Elizabeth

“You didn’t believe me.”

“I am beginning to understand the extent of my error.”

Jane soon drew me away to our room, happy to rescue me from my mother’s calculations and Kitty’s questions.

As soon as the door closed, Jane took me in her arms.

“My dear Lizzy, are you happy?”

The question was harder than any my father had asked.

“Not yet in the simple way you are with Mr Bingley. But I want to learn to be so with him.”

Jane drew back just enough to look at me.

“And if Father had refused his consent?”

“I would have suffered for it.”

“Then you are not marrying him solely for Longbourn.”

I went to the window. Mr Darcy’s carriage waited outside the house.

“I esteem him. Perhaps I even desire him,” I added, feeling my cheeks warm. “And I do not want him to disappear from my life.”

“Does he at least know how uncertain your heart remains?”

“I have shown him my doubts.”

Jane gently squeezed my hand.

“He can only understand what you choose to tell him, Lizzy.”

I looked at the closed door.

“I will speak to him before the wedding.”

She did not ask me when. Her silence alone made my promise weigh heavier.

When I found Mr Darcy in the vestibule, he was preparing to leave for Netherfield, where he would stay during the engagement.

“My father has spared you, then.”

“He threatened me with great elegance.”

“It is his way of expressing his affection.”

His gaze dropped to my mouth before returning to my eyes.

“He asked me if I was certain I could make you happy.”

“And what did you answer?”

“That I would devote my life to that task.”

The intensity of his voice made my promise to Jane harder to utter.

My mother announced from the drawing room that she had already invited the Phillipses to dinner.